After a delicious afternoon of doing nothing, the group met up in the lobby to kick off the secret dinner, organized by our hosts as a welcome event for the delegation. A group of women dressed up as witches approached and led us back towards Stari Gard. Varaždin at night is incredibly quiet and peaceful. It was a chilly evening, and with the witches, felt a little like fall. The witches led us around the castle and filled our ears with stories of the witch hunts that befell the world back in the 12th and 13th century. It was interesting to learn that an estimated 2 million women worldwide were burned and tortured during this dark time in history. The performance was a very cool thing but ended up lasting over an hour where we were out in the cold. Many of our group had just arrived from their international flights, and I have no idea how they were able to tough it out as dinner didn’t even begin until 8 pm.
Everyone was very cold and very hungry by the time they finally led us into a restaurant, Cava. Cava has renovated the old city jail where the witches were once tortured and sentenced, so it was a fitting end to the witch hunt we just participated in. The dinner was phenomenal, with several courses (all made with GF options for me) including pumpkin soup, veal and duck! My favorite dish was a local salad with pickled cabbage and a vinaigrette dressing – simple but so fresh and SO tasty. Most of the recent arrivals cut out soon after the first few dishes were served as they were falling asleep in their soup! It was a very long, but very nice welcome to the Voogle conference and a great way for everyone to get to know each other.
We had an early start the next morning, with a call time of 8:45 am to meet in the lobby and walk over to the theater where the conference was being held. We all scarfed down some breakfast at the hotel and made our way through the park to the theater.
Voogle Conference 2019 gathered our international group of fellows, local entrepreneurs, researchers and students around the topics of business ideation and acceleration, global market building, smart growth and intersectoral collaboration, and women entrepreneurship. You can read more about the event here: www.voogleconference.com
The day was made up of talks from the Chicago delegation, along with a few talks from folks from around Europe. The Americans all kept to their time limit of 15 minutes, but the Europeans waxed poetic for at times up to 40! This made for another very long day (as I type we’re in a van on our way to Zagreb and we may die, just a note). Voogle was a great way to ease into our talks as it was a small audience of around 200 people. It was also a somewhat intimate venue, so it wasn’t as intimidating as I had anticipated. My talk went really well, and even though I had no questions after, many people came up afterwards to chat about ideas and The Catapult model. Not so GF, was the buffet served at the conference, so during the pitch competition I ran back to the hotel and inhaled a chicken dish with some buckwheat pancakes. It was absolutely delicious and I was distressed I didn’t have the time to properly enjoy as I had to rush back to the venue.
Upon arriving breathless and anxious that I wasn’t going to make it back in time, I found that the speed networking portion which they had told us was very important, was cancelled. Sigh. I could have enjoyed those pancakes after all… Trisha and I both had some notes as past event professionals of what could have gone better (timing, having water for the speakers, and soap and toilet paper in the bathrooms for starters), but overall it was a nice event and we met some really interesting people.
After the closing reception, a small group of the Chicagoans (Trisha, me, Heather, Jonathan and Debra) trekked to a local restaurant for a late dinner. Heather had found something on Google that had great reviews, so we headed that direction. Upon arriving the restaurant appeared to be closed. The windows were dark, and there was no one around. Jonathan barged ahead and yanked on a door and magically, it opened! There were two locals sitting there that seemed very surprised to see us (apparently, we came in the back entrance). A waiter led us through a maze of hallways to a private dining room straight out of Game of Thrones. There were colored banners, and chairs the size of thrones. What followed was one of the best dining experiences ever. Our waiter, Domgeoj was phenomenal and treated us to several courses of local fare starting with a meat and cheese platter with spicy fig jam, that had horseradish in it, rendered beef tallow to spread on whatever your heart imagined, a creamy cows cheese that was melt-in-your-mouth, pickled things and all the meats.
It was beyond delicious. I could have been just fine after nibbling on that but had also ordered the salmon on a bed of carrot puree. I really couldn’t eat too much as I was too full and toooooo sleepy. This turned into a three-hour dining experience and we didn’t leave until 11 pm. For all of the above and a bottle of wine for three of us, it was only $40 with tip. We all love the Kuna. It was certainly a night to remember. More than anything it was fantastic to connect with other influential people from Chicago tech. We had great, meaningful and helpful conversations about running businesses and board management. I am certain we’ll all stay in touch after we return.
One last note about Domgeoj, there was a pumpkin oil that everyone raved about that they used to dip bread into, like olive oil. He told us we could find an oil and pasta vending machine just down the road. He wasn’t kidding! There were two vending machines that sold farm fresh eggs, homemade pasta and two different sizes of the pumpkin oil. A few bought small bottles to take home. Definitely the most interesting vending machines we had ever seen!
As I mentioned earlier (in fear), we’re all now headed back to Zagreb for the LEAP summit, a much larger, much more well attended conference. There’s 9 of us, and all of our luggage in a small white van barreling down the highway. Trisha and I are in the very back and let’s just say our little hearts are racing. It’s a miracle I’ve been able to type but at least it keeps my focus off the road. Debra, Trisha and I are all speaking at LEAP at different times sprinkled throughout the day. As a reward for doing another speaking gig we are being treated to a stay at apparently the BEST hotel in Zagreb, The Esplanade. It was once a part of the Orient Express!
2025-02-10